


Anselm, Custodian of the Lines Campbell and Winchester

by jessie_pie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Bureaucracy, Apocalypse, Cherubim, Fallen Castiel, Gen, One Shot, Short, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:58:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7808116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessie_pie/pseuds/jessie_pie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That annoying cherub? Well! He has a name, you know. And he’s done things- important things.<br/><br/>Content warnings for minor swearing, references to violence and death and implicit death threats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anselm, Custodian of the Lines Campbell and Winchester

**Author's Note:**

> Supernatural is not the property of this author.  
> Thank you Osito for beta-ing!

Anselm had received the summons and was now hovering nervously outside of Zachariah's office, his fluffy wings beating overtime to keep his crystalline body aloft. He wracked his memories of the most recent centuries, trying to come up with something outstanding or egregious enough to justify his presence here. It was hard to think of anything. Nothing a cherub could possibly do, even ensuring the continuance of the line of the Prophets, would gain the attention of an assistant to an archangel. And even if he had made a catastrophic mistake- Anselm’s feathers twitched with fear- someone well below Zachariah’s rank should be sent to deal with it.  
“Come in,” six voices said in perfect union, but not perfect harmony. Anselm pushed open the paneled wood door and entered.  
“So, uh, Anselm,” Zachariah said, looking down at the sheaf of papers he was shuffling to check for the cherub’s name. “We’ve been going through the files, checking all the records, and it turns out you have a pretty decent track record.” One of Zachariah’s six heads, a sharp-beaked bird with dark brown feathers, glanced at Anselm. It was the closest to eye contact he had gotten so far. Not that he expected that, not from a superior angel. “We’re going to assign you to a new project.”  
Anselm waited a moment, subtly shifting his crystals. It paid to be patient and respectful, especially when you were dealing with angels who could run you through with their sword and say it was because you annoyed them. When Zachariah continued straightening his papers without speaking, he finally plucked up the courage to ask what the project was.  
“What’s your job, cherub?” The lion’s head was very good at sneering. “Breeding. Breeding those nasty little mud monkeys. Take these-” he thrust the stack of papers in what he assumed was Anselm’s general direction, though he was off by about thirty degrees, since none of his heads was looking at the cherub- “and I’ll schedule another meeting in about a century.  
“Unless, of course,” Zachariah’s voice had a nasty ring to it. “You mess it up.”  
Anselm shuddered as the door shut behind him. He liked to give angels the benefit of the doubt, but even he had to admit: Zachariah was a major douchenozzle.  
Not that that was going to stop him from doing well on this new project. There was a pride to a job well done, even if your boss made King Herod look like a sweetheart.  
Anselm thumbed through the sheaf of papers. It was probably the largest document anyone had ever given him, and definitely the biggest project. Zachariah was the assistant to an archangel; this had to be important. So he had two choices: do well, or be fired. Literally. Into the sun.

A mere three decades later, Anselm felt rather pleased with himself. He had accomplished the first tasks in his assignment quite nicely, namely:  
-Arranging the marriage of William Campbelle and Anne Leighton  
-Ensuring that their union had male issue  
-Inciting said son to immigrate to the New World  
The last point was a bit odd, but cherubim had been receiving more unusual orders since the Non-Interference Order of 8 A.D., as they were the only class of angels exempted from its provisions. Humans might need room to grow and blossom, but the Non-Interference Order was temporary, so angels would still need vessels someday. The higher classes of angels had quickly noted this loophole, and sought to exploit it by attaching as many addendums to breeding programs as possible- never mind that this was completely contrary to the spirit of the Order, and that cherubim were only trained in matchmaking. And causing a family to immigrate to a new continent was far from the strangest order Anselm had ever received; for a few centuries after the Order, it had been all “Anselm, would you tip over a lantern in that little Roman shop?”, “I say, Anselm, be a pal, and heat up this volcano just a tad”, “Anselm, could you whip up a temporary blinding spell for the next chap to pass by on the road to Damascus?”, and Anselm had done it, of course; he was nothing if not devoted, but he had been very relieved when someone at the top- rumor had it was Michael himself- had ordered that cherubim could only be given orders directly related to their core mission, breeding angelic vessels. He was a romantic, not an arsonist, witch or meteorologist.  
Given Anselm’s success, he was more than a bit surprised when he received the summons to Zachariah's office. From everything he knew about the angel, it wasn’t likely he was being called in for a celebratory cigar. But he couldn’t imagine what possibly could have gone wrong…  
“ROANOKE!” Zachariah roared, or rather, the lion’s head roared, while the eagle’s head screamed and the other four chimed in at various pitches and volumes.  
“Sorry, what?” Anselm asked, once his crystals stopped vibrating enough that he could speak.  
“ _Roanoke_ ,” Zachariah growled. “You made the Campbell boy move to Roanoke.”  
Anselm felt his wings quiver. That lion’s voice was really, really good at growling. “You did tell me to have him move to the North American continent,” he pointed out, trying to keep his voice from trembling- not that it would make much of a difference, given the way his crystals were vibrating. Zachariah could kill him at any moment, but if he intended to do so because Anselm had been following orders, he wasn’t about to let him do it without at least a decent argument.  
“There was a demonic experiment on Roanoke,” Zachariah said through gritted teeth and clenched beaks. “There were no survivors. At least nothing that could be called _human_.”  
Anselm reflexively curled his wings around himself. Anything that could trigger that kind of disgust in the higher angel had to be truly terrifying.  
“ _Well?_ ” Zachariah demanded. “It’s not like we can just go and resurrect him.” The eagle’s head fixed Anselm with a piercing glare, and he sank a few inches closer to the floor. “If I have to try to get an exemption, the paperwork will be _staggering_.” _And you will be deceased_ , the eagle’s glare promised Anselm.  
“Fortunately-” Anselm was aware his voice was a sort of squeak, and tried again. “Fortunately, we shouldn’t have to do that.”  
The eagle’s head continued glaring, awaiting an explanation.  
“They had two sons!” Anselm declared with a flourish.  
“And the other one did not emigrate to Roanoke?” Zachariah was still glaring, but not directly at Anselm, more at his massive walnut desk.  
“Still in England,” Anselm assured him. “Though, of course, he can move to the New World in a matter of months if that’s what you want.”  
Zachariah nodded, no longer looking at Anselm at all.  
Anselm let his wings unfurl a little in relief as he flew out of the room. He’d gotten a reprieve. Still, though, he had the nasty feeling it was only temporary.  
  
Anselm wished he could say he was surprised a few years later when he was called to Zachariah’s office again.  
“Well?” Zachariah demanded, nostrils flaring. This time, the ox’s face was oriented towards Anselm.  
“I made the match,” Anselm said, confused. “The schedule I gave you wasn’t exact. We might have to wait a few months more.”  
“They’re _Puritans_ ,” Zachariah said accusingly. “They think it’s a sin to act like the monkeys they are.”  
“Well, it was the quickest way to get them to immigrate,” Anselm demurred, fluttering his wings in a gesture reminiscent of a shrug.  
“They’re using a _bundling board_ ,” Zachariah snarled.  
Anselm hovered a moment before the meaning of Zachariah’s words dawned on him. “Oh,” he said. “ _Oh_.”  
Over the next two centuries, such exchanges became discouragingly familiar. Anselm pushed left, the Winchesters and Campbells ran right. Making matters worse, at least half of them were hunters, so Anselm spent a disproportionate amount of time terrified out of his wits, trying to prevent some Winchester or Campbell from being killed while simultaneously avoiding revealing his existence. The two families took more of his time and effort than any other project he had ever been assigned. Sometimes, he wondered if they knew what was in store for them. Being an archangel vessel was, by all accounts, far from pleasant. Still, orders were orders, and that wasn’t to say the job wasn’t without its perks.  
“What the _hell_ is that?” Zachariah snarled. Anselm wasn’t unduly phased. He’d long since become inured to Zachariah’s aggression. The angel seemed to be simply incapable of adopting a pleasant tone.  
“A dog fancier’s magazine!” Anselm levitated the offending article. “Isn’t it wonderful? This newest bunch of humans, these Victorians, have started breeding dogs to get all sorts of fancy types. They’ve started to do what we’ve been doing for millenia!”  
“Get that thing away from me,” Zachariah growled. “I couldn’t care less what those overgrown monkeys are doing as long as you make sure they keep churning out the right ones.”  
Anselm fluttered his wings in respectful deference. It was a shame Zachariah had never spent any time around the humans; even he was bound to see how charming they were eventually.  
Just thirty years later, however, Anselm had to admit he’d finally reached the end of his tether. One of the branches of the Winchester clan had finally made it big and had sent their eldest son off on a Grand Tour of the Continent. It had sounded like a fine idea at the time, but now, as Anselm desperately battled a chimera before the gawky boy’s wide-eyed stare, he wondered why he hadn’t caused a particularly violent Atlantic storm season to prevent Joshua from ever leaving. Moreover, he demanded of himself as he dodged a vicious downward swipe of the chimera’s claws, why had he been foolish enough to actually _seek out_ one of the most dangerous monsters in the world? It couldn’t actually kill Anselm, but it could make him regret tangling with it-even more than he already did. He’d have to erase Joshua’s memory after this, if he succeeded in keeping him alive. Anselm gritted his vessel’s teeth. He was a cherub, for Heaven’s sake, and everyone knew cherubim weren’t fighters. He was out of his depth.  
One wing dragging behind him, bluish ichor oozing from numerous fractures in his crystals, Anselm voluntarily approached Zachariah’s office for the first time in all his millennia of existence and all of his centuries working on the Winchester/ Campbell project. He telepathically raised the knocker on the huge double door, releasing his psychic hold so it dropped a bit more forcefully than absolutely necessary.  
“What?” Zachariah barked from within.  
“It’s me, Anselm,” Anselm yelled at the doors.  
There was a pause, then an irritated “Oh, alright, come in.”  
Anselm could have re-aligned his crystals in satisfaction if the prospect hadn’t been positively agonizing at the moment. This project was important enough even Zachariah couldn’t completely ignore him.  
Of course, he could still smite him and assign a new cherub to his role… before he could contemplate that thought, the massive doors swung open, and Anselm wobbled through them, leaving a thick trail of viscous blue fluid on the carpets.  
“What is it?” Zachariah sounded both scathing and bored. “You’re getting Grace on my rugs.”  
Anselm found he no longer cared.  
“This is absurd!” he snapped. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been doing? I just fought a chimera. I fought a _chimera_. I’m a cherub, by all that’s sacred. Cherubim weren’t made to fight. It’s ridiculous to ask me to protect the Winchesters and the Campbells as well shepherding their line. I can’t do this alone. Get me some backup or I _quit_.”  
This was it. Anselm had put all his cards on the table. Either Zachariah folded or he smote Anselm here and now. Anselm was betting literally everything on his suspicion that whatever he was doing was vitally important to the Plan. In fact, he was in such bad shape right now that Zachariah probably wouldn’t even have to waste energy smiting him. He could just look at him funny and it would be all over.  
There was a long, tense pause. Just as Anselm was beginning to wonder in earnest if he had made the last mistake of his life and if he would at least explode all over Zachariah’s panelled walls, making a real mess for him to deal with, Zachariah spoke. “Fine. Two seraphim, third division?”  
“Three!” Anselm shot back, emboldened by his success and unwilling to fold now that he finally had the upper hand.  
  
It got easier from there on. Anselm spent less time on the ground, and more time directing his expanding team of seraphim and cherubim. Him, a cherub in charge of seraphim, even low ranking ones!  
No one told him anything still, of course. No one had bothered to explain the final goal of his program or even tell him when it would end. He just kept designing better vessels, one generation at a time.  
But Anselm wasn’t stupid. He was increasingly certain that his final goal was a Michael vessel, and when the paper came across his desk- yes, he had a desk now- announcing a match between John Winchester and Mary Campbell, his Grace fluttered within him, and his crystals vibrated painfully. This was it, the big one, the match of the century and of his career!  
Every difficulty Anselm had ever experienced with a match was amplified tenfold with this one. John and Mary hated each other on sight. She considered him a naif, he thought she was a snob. Anselm ate it up. Nothing was going to stop him now, not so close to his goal.  
He deployed his entire team, used every trick he knew and made a few up. Everything, from the pies in the diner to the light breaths of the breeze was engineered. Anselm could have re-established the rom-com industry by the time he was done, and when John and Mary married in a quiet ceremony, Anselm was invisibly and inaudibly sighing in the pews.  
Then it all went wrong.  
Mary, dead in a horrific fire, with a clear demonic cause, and like that, the perfect little family Anselm had strove so hard to make was gone. “The boys are still alive,” Zachariah had told him coldly. Anselm supposed he had meant it as a condolence: “You have not yet failed.” But he didn’t care, Zachariah didn’t understand, he’d never cared about humans as, well, people, and he had no idea what had been lost.  
Anselm carried on with the project, but he had to admit most of the passion he’d felt was gone. He was fond of Sam and Dean- he knew more of their ancestors than they did!- and it was disheartening knowing that one of these heroic, strong, handsome young men was going to be mulched to a pulp by archangel possession. He barely noticed the absence of a set match for either of the brothers. One of them was a Michael vessel, after all, doomed since conception.  
Then Dean Winchester was raised from Hell and the Apocalypse began in earnest.  
“I don’t understand,” Anselm wailed. “After all we’ve done, after centuries of work, you’re just going to let this _happen_?”  
“In the cards all along,” Zachariah said without looking up from the forms he was filling out.  
Anselm was so shocked he forgot to keep beating his wings and sunk a full foot before he recovered himself. “I don’t understand,” he finally whispered.  
All six of Zachariah’s head turned toward Anselm, and all of them, eagle and lion and serpent and ox and man and raven, all of them were smiling. “Why,” he asked, “were you asked to ensure that the Winchesters had two sons?”  
“A- A backup,” Anselm faltered.  
The serpent’s tongue flitted and the lion’s fangs were exposed as its grin widened. “We’ve never specifically requested a backup before,” Zachariah purred. “That was always you, taking initiative like a good team player. Why now, huh?”  
_Two vessels. Two brothers. Michael and Lucifer._ Anselm sank to the ground, his lower crystals half buried by the thick pile of the Persian carpets. “You lied to me,” he gasped.  
Zachariah’s serpent head looked at Anselm coolly. “No, I didn’t. No one lied to you, cherub. Anything you thought you knew about the Winchester-Campbell Project, you came up with yourself. Now get out of my office.”  
Anselm fled. He was fairly low-ranking, but even he knew that angels were meant to bow to humans even before God. _This_ was bowing? _This_ was worship? Sure, he knew Zachariah had always been disrespectful in the extreme, but he had always assumed this masked some form of crippling insecurity. And all this time he’d been planning this, and Anselm had been the dupe who’d gone along with it. Worse, he’d made it possible.  
Anselm wasn’t conscious of leaving Heaven, but he found himself in a liminal space between Heaven and Earth, occupying his vessel’s chubby body and sobbing facedown on a cloud. It wasn’t fair. He’d hoped at least one of them- Sam or Dean- would be spared and could go on to live a normal life. Their family had suffered enough over the generations. He’d thought it was for some great purpose, but no, it was just to destroy every living thing on the planet.  
A flicker of motion in his peripheral vision made Anselm look up. At first, he thought Zachariah had sent someone to drag him back, but it was the only option that was actually worse than that.  
He recognized him from the wanted posters. The seraph, Castiel, former captain of a garrison, now fallen, to be considered armed and dangerous. _An excellent swordsangel_ , the signs had warned. _If seen, inform your commanding officer at once._ He looked every bit as terrifying as the warnings suggested: the stiff, military bearing of a soldier, but the desperate look of a renegade. His Grace burnt orange, a low flame, yet still powerful enough to fry Anselm like a slice of bacon.  
Anselm knew his superior officer would, at the moment, be happy to get rid of him. He was not about to dial up the angel radio to call Zachariah. Instead, he pressed himself deeper into the cloud, inwardly cursing the bulky vessel that cherubim found fashionable. He peeked up, hoping the fallen angel wouldn’t notice him and just go about his business- hopefully burning down Zachariah’s office.  
No such luck. Castiel was headed towards him. Anselm scrunched his eyes shut, waiting for the end and hoping it would be quick.  
“You are the cherub in charge of the Winchester-Campbell program?”  
Anselm opened one eye. He hadn’t expected conversation. He was nearly as surprised by the momentary reprieve as he was by the fact that this mid-ranking seraph had any idea who he was.  
Up close, Anselm thought, Castiel looked terrible. There were dark shadows under his eyes, his clothes were disheveled, and his lips were chapped. The glow of his Grace was more like the last light from smoldering coals than the blaze of a bright fire. If Anselm hadn’t known better, he would have said he looked sick. But only humans got sick. Maybe this was what falling looked like. He almost felt sorry for him. Almost. The imminent prospect of being run through by his sword rather put a damper on that.  
“Do you have any idea what they are planning for the humans you have cultivated for the past four centuries?” Castiel studied the cherub’s blotchy face intently. “You do. You are fond of them.”  
It wasn’t really a question, but Anselm nodded, sniffling loudly. There would be an advantage to wearing clothing like other classes of angels; he’d have a sleeve to wipe his nose on.  
“I must find them,” Castiel said hoarsely. Just listening to him made Anselm’s throat hurt.  
“What do you want with them?” Anselm demanded, drawing himself to his full height- 5’ 4”. He suddenly hated the cherubic obsession with all things cutesy and diminutive, but he was determined to spend his last 0.2 seconds fighting.  
“I need to warn them. I can’t get past the main gate. There are too many guards. They will be looking for me soon.” It almost sounded like the seraph was pleading. Anselm decided his vessel’s heart was pounding loudly enough to interfere with his hearing.  
“Why would you care about the Winchesters?” Caring about humans, Anselm had just learned, was apparently one of those cutesy things only cherubim did. Or maybe it was just him. Now that he thought of, it he couldn’t remember another cherub expressing anything more than practical concern for a human in their charge.  
“Sam and Dean are the reason why I fell.” Castiel’s voice was still like sandpaper scraping on gravel, but there was a quality to it that captivated him, something he hadn’t heard for millennia, especially not from a superior angel: faith.  
“What are you going to do?” Anselm scarcely dared whisper the words. He’d done a lot of stupid things for the Winchesters, but this was definitely the dumbest.  
“I just need a way in.” Even though the liminal area was deserted, Castiel spoke quietly, as though afraid of being overheard.  
“The Cherub’s Gate,” Anselm said instantly. “They’ve never bothered to guard it; it’s just a service entrance. If you go through with me, no one will ask any questions.”  
Castiel studied him for a long moment before finally nodding in assent. His eyes were as aquiline as those of Zachariah’s eagle head, yet somehow Anselm wasn’t afraid. Maybe centuries of death threats had left him numb, maybe fighting hordes of monsters to save generations of Winchesters and Campbells had toughened him up, or maybe it was the certainty that he was finally doing the right thing.  



End file.
